


What we remember is not always what really happened.

by DitescoMori



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1908894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DitescoMori/pseuds/DitescoMori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of the time he feels like rain during spring or cold during the summer: out of place, out of time. He knows he has been living on borrowed time ever since James Buchannan fell from that train, but being reminded of it is a completely different affair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What we remember is not always what really happened.

Moscow is nothing like he remembers, but if there is one thing about his memory, is that it’s failed to patch the details with the grandiloquence they once possessed. He remembers winters being less cold, coffee more pleasant and time move slower. Everything and everyone moves too fast for him now, and while he knows it’s a simple matter of perception, he knows his subterfuges have grown thin. Most of the time he feels like rain during spring or cold during the summer: out of place, out of time. He knows he has been living on borrowed time ever since James Buchannan fell from that train, but being reminded of it is a completely different affair.

Even then, the Red Square holds its worth of magnetism, the red of the Kremlin still catching the late sun’s light effortlessly, pooling the shadows of the people below into elongated, dark tendrils.

"Never thought you’d feel melancholic about this place," She speaks up after an hour of silence, her voice somewhat lilted with amusement as his is reverie broken. His eyes lower down to the coffee he’s not touched for the past hour.

"I’m not a melancholic to begin with," He piques, his fingers touching the cold ceramic as he turns the cup around slowly on the small plate, "I have but only one good memory out of this place." He shoots his eyes up at her, and suddenly he remembers. It’s the worst way for his memories to replay, but it is one of the many things he has lost control over. She was young and impressionable. He was a ghost and a legend. She learned everything she needed to about survival from him in exchange for a motive to feel alive. She learnt ten different ways to kill a man from him; he learnt ten different ways to touch a woman’s heart.

She isn’t uncomfortable and she steadily holds his gaze. It’s a conversation they’ve gone through endless times, through the endless glances, through the unspoken touches. None of them have ever dared to bring this ghost out loud. It would have a name. It would change everything. “Don’t get me wrong, Natalia, I’m glad you’re happy. I’m glad you’ve found someone to love.”

She clicks her tongue and finishes her coffee, tilting her head to a side in such a way that if James didn’t know her that well, he’d thought she was being condescending, “Oh, James, you know love is for children.”

The arrow at her neck says otherwise.


End file.
